13 Practice: Reflection on Belonging with Prentis Hemphill

January 25th, 2018

Episode description

This practice with Prentis Hemphill, former Healing Justice Director of Black Lives Matter, leads you to cultivate a sense of belonging within yourself that is untouchable by external conditions. It is a political act to claim a belonging and dignity that cannot be threatened by inequality or oppression, and an emotionally empowering act to resource ourselves with this very real human need to know we belong. You don’t need anything except a quiet space for this practice, and you can try it alone or together with a group.Download the corresponding conversation (episode 13) entitled “Blackness & Belonging” to hear Prentis talk about the ways anti-Blackness shapes all of us to deny our own humanity, the role of shame, how we heal so we can give our unique contribution, avoidance, the Black Lives Matter Healing in Action toolkit, how healers are real people with limitations who aren’t better than anybody else, and belonging as a decision we make, not an external condition.

ABOUT OUR GUEST: PRENTIS HEMPHILL

Prentis Hemphill is healer, Somatics practitioner, teacher, writer and organizer who works at the intersections of healing and justice. As the former Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter, Prentis committed to supporting and nurturing the brilliant strategies of organizers and healers to address trauma, move through conflict and center wholeness in the BLM network and in the broader movement for Black freedom and liberation.

Prentis continues their ongoing work as a teacher of somatics and personal transformation with Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), a training program for Black organizers throughout the US, and with generative somatics, which is focused on bringing a politicized Somatics practice to movement building organizations. Prentis has worked for years with communities developing transformative responses to violence and envisioning new ways of being together, including work with generationFIVE and Communities United Against Violence.

Prentis is committed to transformation on the cellular level and the belief that who we are and how we are in our most intimate spaces is vital for our collective liberation.